Thursday, July 21, 2016

ALTHOUGH several polls say AAPI voters tend to favor Democrats and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump does have his supporters in the Asian/American community.

As a matter of face, it turns out that one of Trump's major donors is a Hindu/American businessman, Shalabh Kumar.

Kumar, who is Indian born but now lives in Chicago, is the founder and head of the Republican Hindu Coalition. He and his wife each donated the maximum — a combined total of $898,000 — to Trump and Republican centered PACs to get Trump elected president.Kumar was already sold on supporting Trump before he met the presumptive GOP nominee, but he had a few lingering concerns that he wanted to iron out in a one-on-one meeting. “His positions were not very clear. Sometimes he says off-the-cuff remarks about call centers in India … so I was a little bit concerned about that,” Kumar said in an interview with The Hill. He was referring to Trump’s campaign trail wisecrack about Indian call center workers and Trump’s use of a mock Indian accent.

While Kumar didn’t bring up the call center mockery in his conversation with Trump, he told The Hill he believes that Trump loves India and the Indian people. “I have seen his heart,” Kumar said. He believes his donations should help eliminate some people’s perception of Trump as a bigot.

According to the RHC website: "The U.S. has 2.8 million Hindu Americans with highest per capita income of any other group in the country. We have the highest education, highest proportion of managers, highest number of entrepreneurs (one out of seven), highest donations to charity and least dependence on government. Hindu Americans pay almost 50 billion dollars per year in total taxes."